Q&A: Former Olympian Leah Pells explains why she wrote Not About the Medal

Former Olympian Leah Pells explains why she wrote Not About the Medal

When Leah Pells came home from school one day, she found a pile of kitchen chairs and broken glass on her front lawn. She told her friends to go home because her house had been robbed, but she knew that wasn’t true. She didn’t want anyone to know about her mother’s drinking problem.

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“My friends left, and I went inside,” she writes in her new book, Not About the Medal. “My mum was there quiet and distraught. She looked up at me, then somberly walked to her bedroom and shut the door. I was left there alone in middle of disaster.”

Pells is a decorated athlete. She is one of the best female distance runners in Canadian history and a veteran of three Olympic Games, but her new book is about more than running. In it, she writes about growing up with an alcoholic mother in Langley, B.C., and doesn’t hold anything back. Running was her escape from an unpredictable life at home. Her mother, Lana, was supportive of her running, she says, even if she didn’t show it all the time. Money was tight, but she still bought the 1,500-metre specialist her first pair of track shoes.

We caught up with Pells recently to talk about her new book.

Q:Why made you write this book?A: It was kind of a piece of my own healing that I really needed to do. I would really like to be part of a change in the way people view people living with addiction. I would like to create a more compassionate view of the illness because it is quite villainized. I was trying to be really honest so people could have a better picture of what someone living with that illness looks like.

Q: It’s really personal. You put everything in the book. Were you hesitant?A: I kept a lot of things out, to be honest with you, but I was. When I was writing it, it felt good to get all that out and make peace with it. But then when the book was ready, I was like, “Oh man, everyone is going to read this and know all this stuff about me.” But really that’s why I wanted to do it. People who live with addiction, and their family members, keep it hidden because there is so much shame and guilt associated with it. And that is what I would really like to change. So I felt the only way I could really do that was to be very honest. Otherwise, it would just be another self-help book.

Q:Have you gotten a lot of feedback?A: I’ve had a lot of people thank me because they are living with the same type of illness or they love someone who is ill with addiction and they are grateful that we are talking about it. When you think about it — how many illnesses have shame? Really, addiction is the only one. When you are ill with anything else, you get sympathy and empathy from people, not judgment.